My DH is now having trouble understanding what he is reading. Yesterday he read in the paper about the Seahawks and Saints. We watched the game and knew the Seahawks won. When he read it in the paper he kept thinking the Saints had won and couldn't figure out how they won if they scored less points. He read the article several times and I told him several times but it took about 3 hours before he understood. I know he doesn't always understand what he is watching on TV...half the time I have to explain what is going on even for a football game. He used to know all the players, coaches and which school they were from. Now he doesn't recognise which team is playing or their uniforms. His visual agnosia isn't too bad yet but he doesn't always recognise what he is looking at and he goes in the wrong direction from where he needs to go at times. Fortunately it is all in the house.
He may be past this point, but when my father had mild vascular dementia he could no longer understand the New York Times, but he could read a simpler newspaper. My husband can still read the New York Times on the computer but he can't find anything using Google search any more.
Me DH will sit and look at the paper for hours and read it just under his breath. But when asked what he read he has no idea and gets news mixed up combining stories from several articles. Just another part of this dreadful dx.
Last night was the first time my dh tried to tell me something about someone and I could not understand what he was trying to tell me...it went something like this. "You know that guy that was with that other guy and they went to that place to do that thing...." I didn't have a clue on what he was trying to tell me. I asked him.."what guy?"..."what place?" and he couldn't tell me.
Mine is currently reading the table of contents of one of about 3 books. He only really reads table of contents. I started reading to him a couple years ago, for both our enjoyment, when it became clear that he could not read to himself.
JudithKB, welcome to my world! I play the guessing game of who "that guy or that place" is quite a lot. A lot of the time I can guess who or what he is talking about, but sometimes when I can't he gets upset.
My DH is doing the same thing. He can't understand what he reads, he says "It doesn't make any sense" Most of the time it is because he doesn't get the punctuation correct. Like if it is a question he is reading he reads it like it is a statement. Then the other problem he has is he is losing his vocabulary. If it is a big word he doesn't pronounce it right. He reads most of the things he reads out loud and I can see how he is deteriorating in his verbalization a lot. Not as much when he is talking to me about how he feels or what he wants to say. Or at least not yet. The trouble that he has when talking to me is he doesn't talk much at all.